Salty's Pub & Bistro, 215 Guideboard Rd., Clifton Park, NY, 518-371-1120. Sea side decor in an area adjacent to one of the dining areas in the interior of Salty's Pub & Bistro. (Luanne Ferris/Times Union) Visit Web site. less

Salty's Pub & Bistro, 215 Guideboard Rd., Clifton Park, NY, 518-371-1120. Sea side decor in an area adjacent to one of the dining areas in the interior of Salty's Pub & Bistro. (Luanne Ferris/Times Union) ... more

Tala American Bistro, 626 New Loudon Rd.,Latham, NY, 518-486-TALA.Lobster and burrata, tomato, pickled pear, radish, and basil oil is under starters on the menu at Tala American Bistro on Thursday, June

Tala American Bistro, 626 New Loudon Rd.,Latham, NY, 518-486-TALA.Edamame Dumplings, riesling and shiitake dashi broth is under starters on the menu at Tala American Bistro on Thursday, June 13, 2013 in

Tala American Bistro, 626 New Loudon Rd.,Latham, NY, 518-486-TALA.Margherita pizza at Tala American Bistro on Thursday, June 13, 2013 in Latham, N.Y. Includes choice of fresh or fresh smoked mozzarella,

New World Home Cooking Co., 1411 Rt, 212, Saugerties, NY, 845-246-0900. Exterior of the New World Home Cooking Co. on Saturday October 28, 2000. (Ruth Fantasia/Times Union)Visit Web site.

New World Home Cooking Co., 1411 Rt, 212, Saugerties, NY, 845-246-0900.Exterior of the New World Home Cooking Co. on Saturday October 28, 2000. (Ruth Fantasia/Times Union)Visit Web site.

Photo: RUTH FANTASIA, DG

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New World Home Cooking Co., 1411 Rt, 212, Saugerties, NY, 845-246-0900. Ric Orlando, co-owner of New World Home
Cooking, fixes a puttanesca fresca sauce with heirloom tomatoes in the
kitchen of the restaurant on Tuesday, July 27, 1999. (Paul Buckowski/Tmes Union)Visit Web site.

People dine out differently in the suburbs than they do in urban downtowns.

They go out earlier, visit less often, don't spend as much, hunt for bargains, pay attention to advertising and promotions, and generally want a large menu of mainstream fare that will please everyone from preschoolers to seniors. Midpriced, family-oriented national chains — think Applebee's and Olive Garden, TGI Friday's and Uno Chicago Grille — understand how to exploit these habits and patterns. It's why they thrive in the suburbs, but not a single one has a downtown location anywhere in the Capital Region.

Some independently owned restaurants have always succeeded in the suburbs and exurbs. Salty's Pub in Clifton Park and Reel Seafood Co. in Colonie have been open for several decades, Canali's Italian & American Restaurant has been a Rotterdam fixture since 1946, and The Wishing Well in Wilton opened a decade before Canali's.

But chains dominate the suburban dining scene. The big shopping zones — Wolf Road in Colonie, routes 9 and 146 in Clifton Park, Route 50 at Northway Exit 15 in Wilton, Route 9 near Northway Exit 19 in Queensbury — were once almost the sole domains of chains, at least in the category of sit-down restaurants.

But in the past few years area restaurateurs with significant experience in downtown restaurants have been expanding into the suburbs and learning how to compete with the chains for customers."Urban restaurants are much more consistent when they're busy. A lot of that is driven by business dining; it's a guarantee," says Angelo Mazzone, owner of Scotia-based Mazzone Hospitality. "In the suburbs, during the week at least, you never know when you're going to be busy." The company operates six a-la-carte restaurants and four banquet-only sites. Long familiar with the restaurant scenes in downtown Schenectady and Albany, Mazzone in the past few years has opened Angelo's Prime Bar & Grill in a Clifton Park hotel attached to a mall and Tala American Bistro adjacent to a salon and spa in Latham. He says of suburban business, "It's dependent on the weather, on the school calendar, on whatever they've got going on in their lives."

At New World Home Cooking in Saugerties, owner Ric Orlando says he's always busy on weekends but, midweek from late fall through early spring, "We could do 40 or we could do as many as 150." At New World Bistro Bar in Albany, where Orlando is executive chef and a financial partner, he says, "We can rely on being busy seven days a week." He adds, "We have to work harder on promotional stuff and events [in Saugerties], but in Albany we work harder physically to keep pumping all that food out."

Tim and Colleen Holmes purchased the 16-year-old Wheatfields restaurant in downtown Saratoga Springs in 2004 and ran it for five years before expanding the brand to The Crossing shopping campus in Clifton Park.

"During the week, when people are eating near where they live, they're eating early, they're very conscious about price and value, and they want to get home because they've got to get up in the morning for school or work," says Colleen Holmes.

Another fundamental difference is the way downtown restaurants and bars cross-pollinate with their neighbors. The business-dinner and after-work crowd might have dinner at Angelo's 677 Prime in Albany, followed by a drink at one or more of the half-dozen restaurants located within two or three blocks of its Broadway location. The same is true in downtown Saratoga, where a customer of DZ Restaurants' Boca Bistro might pop in at three other spots including Wheatfields, or Schenectady, where Mazzone's Aperitivo Bistro is roughly across downtown State Street from Johnny's, an Italian restaurant owned by the Mallozzi Group, which also operates suburban eateries.

"People make any evening out of parking once and going to three or four places," says Bobby Mallozzi, whose parents opened their first venture, the bakery Villa Italia, in 1968.

The complementary-downtown-neighbors model was familiar to David Zecchini, owner of three DZ Restaurants in downtown Saratoga Springs and of Pasta Pane in a shopping plaza in Clifton Park. What was new for him was how suburbanites dined. When Pasta Pane opened in 2010, Zecchini marveled that he was seeing lines at the front door before the bar opened at 4:30, the kitchen might serve 300 people in three hours, and the restaurant would be essentially empty by 8:30 p.m. He'd often leave Clifton Park and stop in at his Chianti il Ristorante in Saratoga to find another wave of diners sitting down for a 9 p.m. dinner, and late-night noshers still coming in for food at the bar two hours later.

Zecchini says, "Marketing-wise, we try to run all of the restaurants the same, but we see differences. In Clifton Park, they really take advantage of the specials. They're really big on that in the suburbs."